Home Song (21 page)

“Oh, God, Ruth, I just didn't want to believe it.”

“Neither did I when I first suspected Dean, but evidence piled up.”

Claire whispered, “It hurts so much.”

“Of course it does.” Ruth covered Claire's free hand. “Believe me, I know.”

“He's gone right now, supposedly at school. He's gone so much. But how will I ever know if he's telling the truth from now on? He could be anywhere.” Ruth gave no reply, and Claire felt her despair increasing along with a faint muzziness from the wine. “So this is the moment of truth that you warned me about,” she realized.

“It's not fun, is it, deciding what to do about it?”

“No, it's not.” Suddenly Claire felt a fragment of her spunk return, and she pushed away her wineglass, still full. “But I won't be a two-timed wife! He'll tell me the truth because I'll make him!” She shot to her feet. “I'll be damned if I'll sit here getting drunk over it either!”

The billow of anger felt much better and she rode it home, where she plunged herself into the job of putting blond highlighter in her hair. He returned around ten o'clock and she heard him come up the stairs to their room. He shuffled to a stop in the bathroom doorway and stood tugging tiredly at his tie. She continued kneading her damp locks into question marks around her face, refusing to glance his way.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.” She replied colorlessly, ignoring the plea in his voice.

He pulled his shirttail from his pants and let it hang. Stood there a long time before finally sighing and coming out with what was on his mind. “Look, I've been lugging
around this question ever since supper, and I can't lug it anymore. I've got to ask. How did it go today with Kent?”

She went on jabbing at her scalp with her fingers, lifting her hair and spreading the sweet-and-sour chemical smell in the room.

“It's difficult. Neither one of us knew how to handle it.”

“Do you want me to pull him from your class?”

She shot him a glance. “Mine's the only honors English for seniors.”

“Still, it might be better if he had another teacher.”

“Not very fair to him though, would it be?”

Softly, guiltily, he replied, “No.”

She let him suffer awhile before snapping, “Leave him.”

Tom turned away into the shadows to finish undressing and put on pajama pants. She came into the bedroom and opened a dresser drawer in search of a nightgown. He went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. When he came out she was in bed. He snapped out the bathroom light and picked his way through the dark to his spot beside her. Covered to the armpits they lay as separate as two railroad ties.

Minutes went by while each remained fully aware of the other's wakefulness.

Finally, Tom said, “I called him into my office today, but he refused to come.”

“Can you blame him? He's just as mixed up as the rest of us.”

“I'm not sure what to do.”

“Well, don't ask me.” Claire put a bite in her words. “What does she say?”

“Who?”

“The boy's
mother
.”

“How should I know?”

“Well, don't you consult her on
every
thing?”

“Oh, for God's sake, Claire.”

“How did you know her phone number, Tom?”

“Don't be ridiculous.”

“Well,
how
? You went storming into the kitchen and jerked the phone off the hook and dialed in a split second. How did you know it?”

“It's in my records at school. You know how good my memory is for numbers.”

“Sure,” she said sarcastically, and tossed onto her side facing the dresser.

“Claire, she's nothing more than—”

“Just
don't
!” Claire reared up and glared over her shoulder, one hand slicing the dark above the covers. “Don't defend yourself because I don't know what to believe anymore, and I'm having a hard enough time as it is. I talked to Ruth tonight and she said she saw you in a car with that woman in front of Ciatti's last Saturday.”

“I told you I'd seen her that day.”

“In a
car
, for God's sake! You met her in a car like some . . . some sneaking, low-life philanderer! In a
car
in some
parking lot
?”

“Where else was I supposed to meet her? Would you feel better if I said I went to her house?”

“Hell, you've done that too, haven't you? And where were you yesterday?”

“Out at Dad's.”

“I'll bet.”

“Call him.”

“Maybe I'll do that, Tom. Maybe I'll just do that.”

“We sat on the porch and drank a couple of beers and I told him about Kent.”

“And what did he say?”

“I thought you were going to call him and ask him
yourself. After all, you wouldn't believe it, coming from me. You just said so.”

He plunked over and presented his spine, too.

Back to back, they simmered, devising retorts that would have been sharper and more cutting than those already delivered, wishing they had twin beds.

It seemed hours before they dropped off into fitful sleep, during which any movement from the other half of the bed roused them, the slightest touch made them draw back sharply across the line of demarcation down the center of the mattress. In the deep of night, though each woke at various times, there was no dissolving of anguish, no melting together with whispered words of apology. Only two people who, even in sleep, knew that tomorrow would likely be no better than today.

 

The following morning before school, Tom faced Claire at the English departmental meeting. Once again he felt uncomfortable as her superior. Once again he felt speculative glances cast their way by their fellow workers, who could easily sense the strain between them. Monitoring the hall as the students arrived, Tom watched and waited for Kent, but the boy must have decided to enter through another door and avoid him. At noon, he noticed that Chelsea and Erin were sitting alone and Kent was clear across the cafeteria at a table with Pizza Lostetter and a bunch of other football players. Though Robby usually sat with them, today he sat apart. Tom followed his customary pattern of cruising the lunchroom, pausing here and there to smile and talk with students, but he avoided Kent's table. He watched him leave, dropping his milk cartons in the garbage can. Following Kent's progress from the immense, noisy room, Tom felt the same longing within, a reaching that drew upon him and
made heartache a real human condition. His son. His dark-haired, stubborn, hurt, and haunted son, who had defied his order yesterday and left Tom sitting with his heart in his throat until the end of seventh period before finally admitting Kent wasn't going to come.

 

Later that afternoon, shortly after two o'clock, Tom was putting his desk in order, preparing to leave for the district office, where the superintendent had called the monthly cabinet meeting of all sixteen principals and assistant principals in the district. He closed the budget books on which he'd been working, made a stack of correspondence that needed filing, and was trying to decide how to handle a student report from a probation officer when Dora Mae came to his door.

“Tom?” she said.

“Hm?” He looked up, distracted, with the paper in his hand.

“That new student, Kent Arens, is out here and wants to see you.”

Had Dora Mae said, “The president of the United States is out here and wants to see you,” she could not have rattled Tom any more. The inner chaos he suffered was both divine and daunting. It shone plainly in the leap of color to his face, his gawky expression, and the uncharacteristic, useless flutter of a hand to his tie.

“Oh, well . . . then . . .” Tom realized too late he was giving himself away. He cleared his throat and added, “Send him in.”

Dora Mae went out and did as ordered, then whispered to her fellow secretary, Arlene Stendahl, “What in the world is wrong with Tom lately?”

Arlene whispered back, “I don't know, but everybody's
talking about him. And Claire, too! She's been treating him like some leper.”

Kent appeared in his doorway, grave but with a faint giveaway of color in his own cheeks. He stood foursquare to his principal, dressed in the jeans and windbreaker Tom already knew. The boy could hold himself so motionless that Tom became thrown into even greater disquiet.

“You wanted to see me, sir,” Kent said from the doorway.

Tom rose, his right hand still near the middle of his tie, his heart doing a mad dance in his breast. “Come in . . . please. Close the door.”

Kent did so, keeping ten feet between himself and Tom's desk while Tom waited breathlessly.

“Sit down,” Tom managed. The boy came forward and sat.

“I'm sorry I didn't come yesterday,” he said.

“Oh, that's okay. I probably handled it badly, summoning you that way.”

“I didn't know what I'd say to you.”

“I wasn't sure what I'd say to you either.”

An awkward beat passed.

“I still don't.”

“Me either.”

Had their situation been less grave, they might have chuckled, but too much remained electric between them. Casting about for courage to go one step further, Kent let his eyes graze impersonal objects in the office until at last they settled on Tom. The father and son sat taking each other in under the first unhostile conditions since their relationship had been made known to both of them. What they saw rocked them both. Tom watched the boy's eyes move up to his hairline, across his cheeks, nose, mouth, throat before returning to his eyes. The room was bright
with afternoon light coupled with overhead fluorescence. No detail was lost during that intense exchange.

“On Saturday when Mom told me . . .” The thought went unfinished as Kent swallowed and looked down.

“I know,” Tom said, low in his throat. “It was the same for me the day you registered and I found out about you.”

Kent fought for control and succeeded. “Did your wife tell you I apologized for barging into your house that way?”

“No . . . no, she didn't.”

“Well, I am sorry, and that's the truth. I was just really bummed out.”

“I understand. So was I.”

A lull fell, filled only with the murmur of voices from beyond the door and the electronic nibbling of office machinery.

Finally Kent said, “I saw you watching me on the football field yesterday. I guess that's when I decided I should come and see you.”

“I'm glad you did.”

“Saturday was bad though.”

“For me, too. My family didn't handle the shock too well.”

“I could tell.”

“If they've been acting differently toward you—” When Tom's words faltered, Kent made no reply, leaving Tom to scavenge around for pertinent dialogue. “If you want to change English classes, I can see to it.”

“Does she want me out of there?”

“No.”

“I bet she does.”

“She says no. We talked about it.”

Kent considered this news. “Maybe I should anyway.”

“It's up to you.”

“I know I'm going to be a big embarrassment to her.”

“Kent, listen . . .” Tom leaned forward. His arm fell onto his oversized desk calendar. “I don't even know where to begin. There's so much we have to work through. Mrs. Gardner and I . . . we need to know what you want. If it'll be too uncomfortable for you to have the other students know, they don't have to. But if you want to be claimed in any public fashion, I'm ready to do that. Our situation here at school forces some issues that could otherwise have been left alone. Robby and Chelsea, for example . . .”

He watched Kent color at the mention of Chelsea, and felt sorry for him.

“We're all struggling, Kent, but I think our relationship—yours and mine—has to be worked out first, and while we're doing that the others will have to honor our wishes.”

“But I don't know, Mr. Gardner . . .” When he raised his eyes again, Tom saw not a young man exceedingly mature for his age, but a troubled teenager like any other. The formal mode of address hung awkwardly between them until Kent admitted, “Heck, I don't even know what to call you anymore.”

“I think you should go on calling me ‘Mr. Gardner' if you're comfortable with that.”

“Okay . . . Mr. Gardner . . .” He said it as if testing it before continuing. “I lived my whole life long not even knowing I had a dad, and now it's not just you, it's a half sister and half brother, too. I don't think you understand what it's like when you don't know where you came from. You think for sure that your father had to be some kind of bum, some . . . some homeless guy on welfare, since he never married your mother. You think only a real immoral creep would leave your mother pregnant, right? So I go through seventeen years thinking whoever you are, you're some jerk who I'd spit on if I ever got
the chance. Only when I met you you weren't that kind. It takes some time to get used to that, and a half brother and half sister to boot.”

Tom's reactions were rioting. There was so much more to be said while time ticked away and nudged at him to remember his meeting at the district office. Uppermost in his thoughts, however, was the fact that this boy had been seventeen years late meeting him, and Tom could not summon the wherewithal to draw their talk to a precipitous close.

“Just a minute,” he said, and picked up the phone. With his eyes on Kent, he said, “Dora Mae, would you let Noreen know that I won't be going to the meeting at the district office? Tell her she'll be going without me so she can drive her own car.”

“Not going? But it's the superintendent's cabinet meeting. You have to go.”

“I know, but I just can't today. Ask Noreen to take notes for me, will you please?”